Olga Glazova is from St. Petersburg and a professional gusli player of growing repute. Her chosen instrument, responsible for a quintessentially Russian and supposedly pre-urban sound, is a plucked-string harp. The gusli's roots stretch back to the lyre of ancient Greece, whilst simultaneously enduring in various modern forms across Finland and the Baltic nations. Its pristine melodies in 2017 are equally likely to inspire bittersweet retrospection and fanciful notions of some interrupted national promise.

Of late, Glazova has been making a series of brief documentaries, dedicated to gusli performers and the craftsmen who build the instruments – according to an untabulated, yet persistent heritage. Both musicians and these hardworking rural artisans were brought together in August 2017 at the "Guslis of the World" festival in Suzdal, an ancient Russian town along the so-called Golden Ring on Moscow's leafy periphery. Here, too, the past is very much alive, albeit in medieval, monumental forms.

In wistful tones the festival - at which Glazova performed - continued to speak of itself as "a unique event. We dedicate our efforts each year to an instrument that, while undoubtedly ancient, has yet to be truly discovered. Even by us. As a result, our festival is simultaneously in honor of the gusli, its masterful performers, and the people who make it."

Hence Glazova's growing series of brief, yet important documentaries online, each made with gratitude for quiet, industrious people who - quite literally - perserve sounds from the distant past. Sounds from an imagined, yet unrealized time, long before the ravages of the Twentieth Century.